


distractions

by spacestationtrustfund



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-28
Updated: 2015-07-28
Packaged: 2018-04-11 15:49:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4441829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacestationtrustfund/pseuds/spacestationtrustfund
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All Tony Stark wants out of life at the moment is to enjoy his and Pepper's anniversary without anything remotely relating to SHIELD in the least. Naturally, Strike Team Delta is out to make sure that doesn't happen exactly the way he planned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	distractions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shadesfalcon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadesfalcon/gifts).



 

_I used to waste my time_

_Dreaming of being alive_

_Now I only waste it_

_Dreaming of you_

_~~_

(Fall Out Boy, "Of All the Gin Joints In the World") **  
**

 

***

 

“You know, Pepper, I _really_ don’t think this is going to be a good idea,” Tony says firmly, pacing around the room while he watches her put on her earrings in front of the mirror. “I meant this to be a date for the two of us, just the two of us, not bring the entire team along.”

Pepper sighs and turns away from the mirror, the rubies glittering on her earlobes and catching the light in alluring patterns. Tony wants to take them off along with the matching dress. “It isn’t the entire team, Tony. I only invited Natasha and Clint.”

“It was supposed to be our anniversary, not theirs,” Tony grumbles. He knows he probably sounds selfish and immature, but he doesn’t care. It was supposed to be their special night, not anything to do with assassins, or SHIELD, or anything else. He knows—he has the receipts.

“Look, I know that, but if you had wanted to avoid other people, couldn’t you have made a reservation at a place that isn’t commonly full of hundreds of wealthy stars and other celebrities? It would have made a lot more sense.”

Tony normally likes how smart Pepper is, but sometimes it gets in the way of the point, which is that Barton and Romanov should not be attending. “I tried,” he says. “The Tower would work, but you wanted something more, ah, flashy. So I went with the hotel.”

Pepper finishes with her earrings and moves on to the necklace. It’s one that Tony got her last year, for successfully completing one of his prototypes. “It’ll be fine, I promise. Clint and Natasha are good company, and we don’t have to spend the entire time with them.”

Tony barely manages not to say “good” in response to that. And she thinks he hasn’t been improving his social skills.

Pepper turns in a half circle, letting her dress spin out around her. “This thing is probably more expensive than my house.”

“You live with me now, so it’s not too much,” Tony reminds her, but he doesn’t disagree that the dress was insanely expensive, even for him. It’s one of his simpler anniversary gifts, but in it Pepper looks like a million bucks.

No, more like several billion. A million is barely ten percent of his paycheck nowadays.

“I know, it’s just something new to get used to.” Pepper spins to face him and places her hands on her slender hips. “Well, Mr Stark? What do you think?”

Tony eyes her as if he’s trying to come to a difficult decision. The cut of the dress shows her off in a way that isn’t obvious at first, but after a closer look it’s clear that she’s beautiful. Her hair is gathered into an elegant knot at the back of her neck, and the rubies in her ears and around her throat match the sparkles that trim the edges of the dress. Simply put, she’s breathtaking.

“I think,” Tony says, walking over to her and taking her hands, “that dress better be stronger than it looks, or it might tear after we get done with dinner. Hell, it might tear now,” and he kisses her slowly, glad she hasn’t put on her lipstick yet, until she laughs and pushes him away gently.

“Don’t do that, I’m trying to get ready!”

“You look absolutely stunning, and you don’t need to get ready any further. Besides, we have to catch the plane, and although I would love to be late for certain reasons, I do have a newly established reputation to maintain.”

Pepper smiles and presses her lips to his cheek, sliding her hands over his chest, where the faint glow is visible through his suit. “That sounds perfect to me.”

Tony honestly cannot disagree.

 

***

 

The lines of people are frequent and each person seems to be more expensively dressed than the last. Pepper’s outfit, while certainly beautiful, is low-key compared to some of the revelling dresses the other girls are wearing. _If I was the old me I could go through a half dozen of these girls in one night_ , Tony thinks, then reminds himself that “the old me” is not going to show up tonight. This is a night for Pepper, not random starlets with barely any clothing.

Their table is near the back, with dim lighting, which would be romantic and classy if Clint and Natasha weren’t sitting at it already, talking in quiet voices over glasses of champagne. Tony recognises it as Dom Perignon’s _Rosé_ and bites back a scowl. They’re wasting valuable drinks on frivolous _banter_ . It’s simply amateur of them.

Clint looks up and waves at the two of them as they approach. “Stark, Pepper! Nice to see you guys! Ms Potts, you look absolutely ravishing,” he says, winking at her as he drops a kiss onto her hand. Natasha raises her head and beams at Pepper, who smiles back beatifically.

Tony purposefully doesn’t act as if he’s jealous. He isn’t jealous. Of course not. He just doesn’t want them to be there. “Is that _Rosé_ I see? Ah, yes, can’t waste that stuff.” He pours himself a full glass and drinks most of it immediately. Pepper doesn’t even give him a disapproving glance.

Natasha and Pepper make small talk, by which Tony means extremely small, and Clint occasionally jumps in to comment on some interesting event. Now that Pepper’s been working with the rest of the team, she’s been given all sorts of intel about all sorts of interesting things which Tony hasn’t been paying attention to in the least. Natasha, of course, knows more than nearly anyone else in SHIELD, except possibly Clint. They make a good pair, but Tony isn’t in the mood to admire assassins when he could be admiring Pepper.

He starts listening for real when he overhears Natasha saying, “—not sure about the technology. It isn’t one of ours, that I know, but I’m not certain that it isn’t one of yours.”

“I don’t think so,” Pepper says thoughtfully. “I would know, since I oversee all of the orders now, and there hasn’t been one discussing firing there at all. Most likely it’s one of our enemies who’s decided to get a hold on our tech and use it against us.”

“Our enemies,” Clint murmurs into his glass of champagne. “We seem to have a lot of those, don’t we? And they keep getting stronger, the more we fight them.”

Natasha smirks. “Poor you, having to deal with the difficult work.”

“Oh, shut up,” Clint mumbles.

“What do you mean?” asks Pepper, looking confused.

Natasha puts her hand on Clint’s arm consolingly. “Mr Deals-With-the-Difficult-Work here got a promotion from Fury last weekend. He’s now in charge of training groups of new recruits when they come in. It’s a big honour, and a bigger deal.”

“And a bigger pain in the ass,” Clint says under his breath.

Pepper blinks in astonishment and actually claps her hands excitedly. “Oh, that’s great! Is that why you two are here tonight?”

“In a way,” Natasha says cryptically. “We’ve also had a tip-off that one of our targets should be here tonight. In was pure luck that we got the invitation from Pepper yesterday. It looks far less suspicious if we’re seen with you.”

Tony raises his hands in a demand for silence, trying not to shout at them both and failing miserably at it. “No, no, no, no, no. And _no_ . No missions, no kills, no explosions, no ruining my special night—”

“ _Our_ special night,” Pepper corrects him gently.

“—yes, that. No SHIELD, no agents, no reconnaissance, no anything! This is a big deal for us, and I don’t want you guys or SHIELD screwing it up because of some top-secret tip-off about one of your goddamn _targets_ .”

“You don’t have to be involved,” Clint says mildly. “All we need to do is borrow you as a cover so that we can do the dirty stuff quickly and get it done with, then leave, and you and Ms Potts can enjoy a lovely night together.”

“Absolutely not,” Tony says firmly.

Pepper arches an eyebrow. Tony knows for sure she spent time styling it. “I’m in,” she says. Tony is seriously considering marking her as a traitor where missions are concerned. Clint and Natasha are her rather obvious weakness. “What do you need from us?”

“Just be a distraction,” Natasha says.

“Just be yourself,” Clint adds.

Tony glares at them both, one after the other, trying not to get irritated by their smug and matching grins. “I swear, if either of you ruin this any more than you already have, then I will—”

“It isn’t a problem,” Pepper interrupts, giving him one of her looks that means shut-up-and-let-me-handle-this. “If you need any help, I would be willing to do something. What ’s the target’s name?”

“Ivan Tsiolkovsky,” Natasha says, her voice smoothly rolling over the unfamiliar name. “One of my old ones. It’s a long story, but he knows too much. Fury wants him out of the picture, no info or anything. Just gone. So that’s our mission for tonight.”

Clint raises his hand as if he’s in a meeting and he wants to say something. Tony, for his part, wants to smack him. “Also we were hoping to have a romantic evening, killing people and whatnot. You know, that kind of thing.”

Natasha nods and sighs simultaneously. “Yes, there is that. Those lines do often cross.”

Clint smirks at her. “I don’t mind.”

Tony is slightly jealous of the fact that the two of them can be killing people and consider it a romantic evening, whereas he’s been trying to enjoy a simple date night with Pepper and it’s going to end in disaster. He’s almost certainly sure of it.

“Well,” Pepper says, “I’m sure it’ll be great. Tony and I are also celebrating our anniversary, which is why we made reservations here. It’s lucky that we did, or else we wouldn’t have been able to help.”

Tony interrupts her this time. “No, you’re missing the point,” he snaps. “The point of making reservations here was so that we wouldn’t be bothered by any of this stuff. Not so that we could assist a couple of notoriously wanted assassins finish a goddamn job.”

“ _Vot der’mo_ ,” Natasha mutters under her breath.

Tony is glad he doesn’t speak Russian.

“Calm down,” Pepper says soothingly, reaching over to put her hand on his arm. “It’s fine. We can still have a nice evening without everything being exactly how you want it to be. It doesn’t have to be a certain way. It’s okay.”

Tony scowls but doesn’t respond.

Natasha sips her champagne and raises an eyebrow at Clint. “I have a visual on the target. Should we go and socialise and act like a perfectly innocent couple of people who have no plans to murder anyone tonight?”

Clint stands up and offers her his arm like a proper gentleman. Tony hopes Pepper doesn’t get any ideas. He doesn’t think he could pull off half the stunts Clint Barton can accomplish. “Tasha, darling, I do believe we should.”

And then they’re gone, and Tony feels like it’s wrong to be so relieved, but he wants to focus on Pepper, not SHIELD. He turns towards her and raises his glass. “So here it is, the dreaded one year. You know they say that if a couple can get past this one, they’re practically perfect for each other?”

“I didn’t know that, actually.” Pepper smiles and touches their glasses together before taking a small sip. “I’m only adept in acting as your babysitter and managing all the things you couldn’t do without me.”

Tony pretends to clutch his heart, or his arc reactor. It’s the same thing, really. “You wound me, madam. I’ve improved since last time we brought this up. I think I could last for—two weeks without you.”

Pepper’s smile widens. “I wouldn’t be so sure.”

“You’re right,” Tony admits. “I wouldn’t last one day without you, Ms Potts.” He lifts his glass again, noticing that the amount of champagne has decreased significantly. “A toast to, and in honour of, the two of us.”

They touch their glasses together again and drink. Pepper smiles when she notices Tony watching her, and leans across the table to give him a brief kiss on the cheek. “Thank you for setting this up, even if it didn’t go exactly as planned. It’s still wonderful.”

Tony raises one of his eyebrows and winks slyly. “That’s me, sweetheart. I’m all about the wonderful.”

Pepper giggles and nods her head, her earrings glittering in the dim light. “I can’t disagree with that one.”

“Aren’t you glad you took the job back then, Ms Potts?”

“I don’t regret it,” Pepper admits. “Although I had no idea that this is where I would end up when I filled out that application form and handed you my résumé.”

Tony is enjoying himself much more now that they’re relatively alone. People are still passing by their table every so often, but not many of them pay attention to him or Pepper. There are many, much more famous and well-recognised people in the room. He thinks he catches a glimpse of Natasha and Clint, dancing with their arms around each other, although from the way they’re looking surreptitiously around they’re still working on their mission.

“Do you want to dance?” he asks Pepper, setting his nearly-empty glass of champagne down on the tablecloth.

Pepper smiles and gets to her feet. “I guess it’s okay now, so yes. I would like to dance.”

Tony slides his arm around her waist and guides her smoothly out into the crowd of people. Natasha and Clint have disappeared, and while Tony knows that this probably means they’re up to something he doesn’t want to know about, he doesn’t mind that they’re gone. Maybe it’s selfish, but he wants tonight to be about Pepper.

The music is low and barely noticeable, but even so they’re mostly quiet. Tony is actually starting to enjoy himself, spinning Pepper around, conscious of everyone’s eyes on the two of them. She laughs and leans in to kiss him, with that little smirk on her face that is so rarely seen.

Things are starting to look up. Naturally, that’s when they have to go wrong.

 

***

 

Clint and Natasha haven’t been seen in a while, and Tony has no interest in looking for them. He and Pepper are dancing to a slow, romantic song that he doesn’t recognise, when out of nowhere he hears a gunshot. It echoes off the walls and someone screams. Glasses break and suddenly people are running everywhere.

“Goddammit,” Tony swears, tugging Pepper back, away from the place he thinks the shot came from. “I knew this was going to happen, dammit, I knew it—”

There’s another gunshot, and then the bursting glare of a minor explosion. Flames wash over the curtains and run hungrily over the floors, and one of the walls is obscured in smoke, crumbling into the dust.

Pepper ducks down and tries to pull Tony next to her, but he moves in front of her like a body shield. Of course, it didn’t work the first time he tried to block shrapnel with his own body, but he’d be willing to die to protect Pepper. She knows all of his passwords, anyway.

Tony thinks he sees Natasha, and of course she’s the one with the firearm. One of Clint’s arrows flies past his head and buries itself in the wood of an overturned table. _How did he even smuggle the bow in?_ thinks Tony incredulously. _Where would he hide it, in the front of his suit?_

People are beginning to crowd and stampede towards the exits, still screaming. There’s a body on the ground, probably the target Clint and Natasha were supposed to take out, but other than that everyone looks fine. Tables are broken, glasses are shatters, and Dom Perignon’s champagne is spilled everywhere.

Natasha and Clint run by, Natasha with a gun that she’s trying to shove down the front of her dress, kicking off her shoes as she climbs over a broken table. She yells something in Russian that Tony doesn’t understand.

“I have no idea what you’re saying,” Clint yells in response. He grabs Natasha’s hand and they vanish into the smoke.

Pepper appears out of nowhere and wraps her hand around his arm. Tony glares after Clint and Natasha. “They managed to do everything I told them not to do. Explosions, fire, weapons, screaming people who could possibly pay me lots of money—how do they do it?”

“It’s their job,” Pepper says, a definite not of resignation in her voice. “We have to let them do it.”

Tony tears his gaze away from the flames licking at the expensive tablecloths to look down at her. Her hair has fallen loosely around her shoulders, there’s a smudge on her cheek, and the expensive dress is smeared with dust and soot. But to him she can’t be more beautiful than she is now.

They hurry back to the limo and speed away from the scene as quickly as possible. Firemen are beginning to arrive, flashing lights and whirling sirens. Smoke is pouring out of every window. Pepper peers back at the building, worried. “I hope they’re all right.”

“They’re Strike Team Delta, it’s their job to be all right,” Tony says grudgingly. He catches Pepper’s hand and presses it to his lips, then tangles his fingers in her hair and pulls her into a proper kiss, not caring about anything else.

Jarvis leaves them at the door, and Tony leads Pepper to their room, kissing her cheek and her neck, smudging her makeup. The earrings brush against her skin as they fall together onto the bed, the fabric of her dress and his suit creasing when they move.

“Well, Mr Stark,” Pepper whispers, reaching up to undo her dress, “did you have a nice evening?”

Tony smiles and pulls her closer. “Ms Potts, I couldn’t ask for more.”

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](spacestationtrustfund.tumblr.com).


End file.
